The Wages of Sin [The Mysterious] (7 page)

BOOK: The Wages of Sin [The Mysterious]
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Opening her fan with a punctuating snap, she gave a mock gasp of contrition. “Oh, forgive me, I mean his
guardian.
I never understood why we allowed his sort in the house in the first place, but now, look, God is punishing us for it.”

Jasper spooned pork chops and spinach onto his plate, pretending to be somewhere else, but George’s stunned look flickered, disclosing an instant of fear. “His
sort
?”

“Take your pick. Born a bastard, raised a Catholic. He spends all his time impressing the credulous with wicked, arrant nonsense. I wouldn’t put it past him to have frightened Emma to death. She was so…” She choked on a sob, covered her face with both hands. “So frail. Maybe… maybe I shouldn’t have told her about father. Maybe it is I who am to blame. I can’t bear the thought of her lying up there, the thought of it preying on her mind until…” She covered her face with her apron, tears turning the material translucent beneath her fingertips.

Jasper grasped the edge of the table and stood. He stepped away, tucked his chair neatly back under the cloth and rested his hand on its back. “She’s right. I’m intruding on a time of grief. I don’t belong here. I should go.”

“No!” Charles’ silent denial was echoed from the head of the table by George. “You can’t. I need… we need you.”

The aura of George’s authority had popped like a soap bubble. Charles almost felt it indecent to be in the same room as him; to see how little was left of him when the airy conceit and self-love had been exploded. “I won’t say I’ve believed you in the past. Hell, I didn’t believe you this morning, but if there’s half a chance there’s something in your babble… If there is some malignant spirit killing us one by one, then we need you to exorcise it. You’re a priest, aren’t you? Do something. Cleanse the house. Help us.”

Jasper gave a shout of laughter, and then another, harsh as the rattle of a mill. “You need me? It’s a little unfortunate then that you come so late. You need a priest? I am afraid I cannot help you.”

“Jasper…”

Jasper eased forward, all but vibrating with intensity, until his mouth was inches away from George’s ear. “In case you have forgotten, I cannot help you because
I am not a priest any more
. You know why not.”

Straightening, he brushed the dust from his arms, avoided Charles’ eye, and sketched a slight, impeccable bow. “I wish you all good day.”

§ § § §

That great stride of his ate up the distance. Even running it took Charles until the stables to catch up with him. Jasper flinched from the hand on his arm, tearing it away, turning aside to brace himself on the wall beneath the archway. “What do you want, Mr. Latham?”

Sunset stained the cobbles red. The head groom and his apprentices passed, leading out the horses for their final exercise of the evening. Sultan whickered in greeting and Charles reached out automatically to pat the arched neck. But all those other curious glances raked over his soul like steel spikes. Jasper too, hand over his eyes, withdrew into himself as he had earlier done at the table. The buttons of his cuff trembled with the shaking of his hand.

When Sultan’s trailing tail swished out of sight and the hoof beats trailed into the distance, Charles seized Jasper’s wrist, drew him into the shelter of the empty stalls. “She had no right to speak to you like that.”

Jasper’s chin twitched, his smile a gesture of defiance. “It is only what I’ve become accustomed to from your family.” He covered his eyes again, rubbing at his temples, then laughed. “No, that’s unfair of me.”

To the right of the door, wooden steps led up to a hayloft; a glimpse of barrels and old, stiff tack hanging from pegs. Jasper perched on the lower steps, drawing up one long leg, wrapping his hands around the knee. “She’s lost a father and a sister in the same week. She’s husbandless and alone in a state of helplessness, confined to a house full of death. I would be less than gracious myself in such circumstances.”

He reached up and grasped the rough rope of the stair rail, rested his face in the crook of his arm. “In truth I
have
been less than gracious myself. I do not make allowances enough for grief.”

Faced with this forgiveness, Charles remembered his own conduct with shame; the misjudgement and accusation, which Jasper had born with this same patient, gentle resignation. “We have all made a scapegoat of you.”

It startled a fleeting smile out of the man. “Well, that is an honourable task for a man of my profession.”

Outside the door, the level rays of the sun had turned deep topaz. They gilded the downcast face, picked out the foreign, exotic cast to its beauty. Jasper’s eyes were almond shaped, slightly slanted in bones that looked archaic as the pyramids. Cast in gold by the sunset, his might have been the face of a pharaoh. A godking, not a priest.

“Your profession?” The thought pushed the pendulum of Charles’ sympathy back towards suspicion. He reached down and rubbed the material of Jasper’s cuff between thumb and forefinger. “Yes, tell me about that. You dress as a clergyman. You told me…”

“I know,” Jasper twitched off the accusing fingers, hauled himself to his feet.

“So you’re a liar. And what else? A charlatan?” He shoved Jasper hard in the chest, but the man barely swayed. He moved his foot back half an inch and then stood, immovable. It made Charles furious. “I will admit you have a charming, plausible way with you, but you are a liar.” He pushed again, and again it was like jarring his palm against a wall. “Have you been gulling my family, and me? Worming your way into our sympathies. Taking advantage of our loss to… what? Get back at George?"

Jasper shook his head. His mouth twitched, and then he broke out again into that open-hearted laugh of his, though it had a faint high note of strain in the peals. When Charles hit him a third time, he caught Charles by the biceps, pulled him forwards. Caught off balance physically and emotionally, Charles stumbled. His fists tangled in dark wool and he felt the chest beneath it, firm and warm, lift in a gasp. That fear was back in him—the fear that felt like yearning. He struggled to find a firm foothold, somewhere to push away from, but Jasper lifted him bodily off the ground and slammed him into the supporting pillar of the stairs.

The jolt of impact felt as though it had winded him, or perhaps it was the look on Jasper's face that made his chest feel hollow, his lungs forget how to take in air. His heels knocked against the wood as he thought again of vampires. He wanted... didn't want… It didn't matter what he wanted, for though he set his fists in Jasper's hair and pulled with all his might, Jasper's head bent down to his. The wig fell, a white blur, to the ground. Charles' panting breath burned in his throat and dizziness washed over him. He could feel Jasper's breath against his lips, and instinctively he tilted back his head, offering himself.

The first touch of skin to skin, delicate as a falling petal, and his whole body jerked involuntarily as if struck by lightning; sweet, liquid, erotic lightning. The hands that had been forcing Jasper away pulled him closer, and an itch of pleasure stuttered down his arms at the feel of the man's thick hair tangled about his fingers.

Pinned still against the pillar, he arched up, feasting on the hot mouth on his. He licked and it opened. Jasper pushed harder against him, his tongue slipping into Charles' mouth, and Charles' whole body shuddered with the second shock, the invasion so personal, so unthinkable, so
oh God
, so fantastic. He made a little whining gasp he scarcely recognised as his own, and picked both feet up, winding his legs around Jasper’s hips.

That was… oh dear God, that was… so much
more
. The silk of his breeches scratched across the sensitive skin of his inner thigh, even his calves tingled, pressed into Jasper’s buttocks, and his prick raged and rejoiced, tight against Jasper’s belly. He shifted and felt it rub almost painfully over the hard mound of Jasper’s prick. Through four layers of linen, silk and wool, the sweet intense heat made his stomach clench. A black taste of iron in the back of his mouth, and mindless, rutting need seized on him made him do it again. The second time was better.

Jasper’s fingers trembled, clamped bruisingly tight around his biceps and the little shudder of them felt stupidly tender. Their kiss broke apart, Jasper mouthing over his jaw, biting his chin. He offered his throat, tightened his legs, pulling Jasper closer in, thought of taking off clothes, and then of nothing but the build of blood, the clench of his balls, the hot dry rub of his prick against Jasper’s prick. Sweat soaked out from his groin, made the fabric of his shirt tucked tight between his legs cling, damp as a tongue.

Jasper’s mouth closed on his throat. A little biting pain, tongue lapping wet at the mark. The suck went straight to his bollocks. As he squirmed, his wet shirt pulled out slightly, stroking arsehole and the tender flesh between his legs. Pleasure teetered on the edge of pain, rolled over him. He shut his eyes and held on tight while the world ended in fire.

And then it started up again and he found himself soaked in sweat and come, smelling of sex and horses, with Jasper’s arms around him and the wide forehead resting damp against his own. There was a blessed moment of warmth—gentling breath against his face and a sense of safety—and then Jasper gave a soft laugh and said “You see why I’m no longer a priest. I’m sorry.”

It was dark in the stables now. They both trembled. “Put me down, please.”
“Yes, of course.”
The strength had left Charles’ legs. He clung on to Jasper’s solid form for a moment longer, just to catch his breath, then leaned down and picked up the fallen wig. “I wanted to see you without this. Now it’s too dark.”
The voice over his head was warm and soft as his featherbed. “There will be other chances.”
“Do you think so?” Lord, how was he to explain this to George? To Elizabeth? Walking back in to dinner with a bruise the size of two sovereigns on his neck and a wet patch all the way to his knee. Was he insane?
“Loathe though I am to agree with George, he’s right on this. You must bring in an exorcist. It doesn’t need to be me.”
The shirt that had been so delightful earlier now chilled against his skin. So, this had resolved nothing, changed nothing. “But you won’t be going far?”
He guessed the smile from the tone of voice. The world had become a place of scent and touch, the big hand around his cheek seemed a spot of light only because it was so warm. “Just to my own house.”
“Good.”
“Charles, are you well?”
He reached up, pulled the hand away. Held it a moment in the darkness and then let go. “I’m splendid. Good night to you.”

“Goodnight then.” The whisper, with its faint tone of regret, followed him out into the colder dark of the drive. He stood for a moment fighting the urge to go back, to argue more, or go somewhere they could make love properly. Then he sighed and headed to the kitchen gardens, where if luck was with him, he could climb from the apple tree into his chamber, unobserved.

§ § § §

The morning brought rain. Heavy, persistent rain that fell like silver rulers on the grey gardens and gurgled through the downspouts, pouring from the mouths of the gargoyles at the eaves of the roof. When he could skulk no longer in his own room, Charles wound an overlong cravat about his neck to hide the bruise, tucked the breeches guiltily between the mattress and the base of his bed and rang for his valet.

The man went through their morning ritual—coffee, shave, newspaper, stockings and breeches, more coffee, the appraisal and dismissal of a half dozen waistcoats—with no apparent consciousness that he was breathing the same air as a sod. Some of Charles’ jitters eased. Perhaps it wasn’t something, then, that displayed on the skin like a rash. Perhaps he could do this, get away with it, after all.

Dressed, he avoided the breakfast room, opened a door into the library. But there sat George and Elizabeth, on either side of the fire, pretending to read while staring into the flames. So he shut the door again silently, and made his way down the corridor to his father’s study.

Far more of a sense of trespass on holy ground here than there had been in the chapel. He had been permitted in this room only twice in his life before; once when he left for university, once to be told the pocket borough he had been promised would be going elsewhere. He edged the door open warily, as though a terrible authority inhered in the very carpet.

A scuffed, rather worn carpet of blue and pink flowers, with a geometric peacock in its centre. The large bay window had been left curtained, and as he opened the heavy blue velvet, a scent of cigarillos and pomade engulfed him. His shoulders ached, and he turned, expecting to find his father in the chair, watching him with white ringed blue eyes from the centre of his own cloud of smog.

But only the chair was there, its red leather seat stretched and sagging. He drew up the sash an inch to let the smell out, then ventured over to touch the tapestried coat of arms on the back of the chair as if it was a holy relic.

He was going to do blasphemy. But he had broken so many rules this past night, why not add one more? So he drew out the chair and with a little frisson of guilty pleasure, he sat down at his father’s desk.

Guilty pleasure, that was the phrase indeed. What had he been thinking? It was one thing to indulge oneself in fantasies at night, quite another to act on them. He’d never really thought of himself as the kind of pervert who ended up on the gallows. Yet no jury in the land would hesitate to put him firmly in the same category.

What had he been thinking? Yet how just was it to bitterly punish something so sweet? This sin so heartily abhorred by all—why? What harm did it do to any?

He reached down and traced the brass lockplate of the topmost, left hand drawer. Inlaid ivory and walnut glimmered in cream and gold spirals about it, and the delicate brass handle made a satisfying click as he flicked it up and down again. He drew the drawer out gently and lifted the pile of papers within onto the scene of nymphs and satyrs who cavorted across the desktop.

Spreading out the dog-eared bundle of old bills and letters, he found his gaze wandering again; the picture of the monarch stag that hung beside its preserved head, Ambrose’s smoking jacket hanging from an antler. A family portrait; himself like a little girl with his golden ringlets and white dress, the sash around it cornflower blue as his eyes, sitting primly upright on the lap of a mother he could not now remember. George, a rapscallion boy with a fishing rod; Elizabeth very demure, with a pet linnet.

BOOK: The Wages of Sin [The Mysterious]
2Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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